"Nov. 23, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



315 



on a par with the child of a couple of years. The case is 

 the same with regard to that one of the five senses which 

 is most closely allied to organic sensibility. We allude to 

 Taste. 



Taste is a remarkably well-developed sense. The new- 

 born infant is able from the very first to discriminate all 

 strong impressions of taste, and, according to experiments 

 conducted many years ago by Dr. Kussmaul, the expres- 

 sion of face for a bitter taste differs from the grimace 

 elicited by a sour one, and both these, of course, from the 

 pleasurable look which accompanies sweet tastes. Even in 

 the absence of actual experiment the developed state of the 

 sense of taste cannot fail to strike those who have had 

 much to do with babies. The son of the philosopher 

 Tiedemann, for instance, was observed by his father to 

 distinguish the taste of medicine from that of his ordinary 

 food when only thirteen days old. I'rofessor Luigi Ferri, 

 in an interesting article contributed to a scientific review 

 (" La Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane ") states that at a very 

 early stage of his little girl's existence she obstinately 

 refused goats' and asses' milk, while there are innumerable 

 instances where infants of two and three months old have 

 pushed away their feeding bottles when the contents were 

 not sweetened to their liking. 



In face of all these facts, we cannot but agree with 

 Professor Preyer, that taste is the first sense, and judg- 

 ment and memory have their earliest development in 

 the region of this sense. It is partly on account of 

 this that the purely instinctive action of taking nourish- 

 ment so soon becomes amenable to the control of the 

 will, till children not only sustain the necessary action 

 when begun, but learn to make spontaneous movements to 

 begin it. 



After taste, the two senses which come earliest into play 

 are smell and touch. Now, with regard to smell, it is 

 more by logical deduction than by direct testimony that 

 we can attest its presence. To the human being, smell is 

 the least important of all the five senses, and therefore 

 what olfactory sensations there are at the beginning of 

 life would probably be of the faintest. We know, how- 

 ever, that the sense of smell cannot be in total abeyance, 

 because it is intimately connected with taste, so that the 

 presence of the one implies the presence of the other. Not 

 to smell is not to taste — a truth recognised in the homely 

 advice to " hold your nose " when you have to swallow 

 nauseous medicine 



There being no satisfactory means of discovering the 

 relative intensity of the olfactory sensations of the new- 

 born infant, some scientific inquirers have had recourse to 

 experiments on newly-born animals. Uut such experi- 

 ments are necessarily inconclusive as regards human 

 beings, just because the place of smell in the hierarchy of 

 sense is not identical in the case of men and animals. 

 With animals, smell is the most important of the senses, 

 since it is by its means that they track their prey and 

 avoid danger. We are therefore prepared to find in them 

 an early and wonderful power of discriminating smells, and 

 the following experiment tried many hundred years ago 

 by Galen makes no undue claims on our credulity. 



Galen brought a newly-dropped kid into a room in which 

 were placed several open vessels containing wine, honey, 

 oil, grain, and milk. 



Soon, th(^ little animal struggled to its legs, and after 

 staggering from one vessel to another, sniffing at eacli in 

 turn, finally came back to the one which held milk and 

 drank out of that. Obviously only the sense of smell 

 could lia\e dictated this choice, and a very finely developed 

 sense too it must have been. In men, such an early 

 development of this sense is not to be expected. As we 



said before, smell serves the very humblest functions in our 

 lives, save, indeed, when there is any unusual want of 

 acuteness in the other sense. Under these circumstances, 

 truly smell rises into prominence and conveys to the mind 

 much knowledge of outside things, which ordinarily would 

 be transmitted by other channels. 



As an example of this we may instance James Mitchell, 

 the blind, deaf-mute, whose sense of smell was rendered so 

 abnormally active by the defectiveness of his other senses 

 that he could perceive the presence of a stranger simply by 

 this one sense. 



Rare and exceptional cases such as these, however, do 

 not aflfect the general truth, that smell with us is a sub- 

 sidiary sense, and therefore but feebly manifested in 

 the infant's early life. When smell, however, does begin 

 to show itself, it may be safely said that it will always be 

 in the direction of what we may call alimentary odours. 

 A child who, at the age of nine or ten months, shows 

 a marked preference for chocolate, cofiee, and all other 

 articles of food which furnish sensations both of taste and 

 smell, will be found on subsequent investigation to be very 

 susceptible to smells generally. A. M. H. B. 



{To he continued.) 



The First Inventor of tue Telepuone. — An important 

 decision has been made by the American Patent Office 

 examiner on the title to the first invention of the speaking 

 telephone. The chief claimants for the honour were Bell, 

 Edison, Gray, and Dolbear, but many other inventors set 

 up claims to a share in the invention. The whole inven- 

 tion or subject-matter in dispute was divided under a 

 number of heads. The first of these relates to the art of 

 transmitting sonorous vibrations of all kinds and quality 

 by varying the strength of an electric current, and Bell is 

 declared the first to have invented this. In the second 

 article, which relates to the means of transmitting speech 

 by varying resistance in the transmitter. Gray was declared 

 the first to conceive and disclose tlie invention in 

 his caveat of February 1-1, 187G, but failed to take 

 action and complete it initil others had done so, hence the 

 priority is awarded to Bell. Edison is declared the first to 

 employ an " electro-hydro-telephone, the fluid holding ver- 

 tically an adjustable tube, within which the ends of the 

 platinum points are immersed," he having exhibited this 

 feature in a water telephone at the end of December, 1876. 

 Bell is awarded priority for the magneto-induction, trans- 

 mitting, and receiving telephone ; the date of his patent 

 being February 14, liSTG. An important decision relates 

 to "a telephonic receiver consisting of the combination in an 

 electric circuit of a magnet and a diaphragm supported and 

 arranged in close proximity thereto, whereby sounds thrown 

 upon the line may be reproduced accurately as to pitch and 

 quality. May, 1875, is the date of McDonough's invention of 

 this device, and priority is awarded to him'. The well-known 

 Bell receiver is therefore a mere variation of McDonough's 

 earlier invention ; but the " combination with an electro- 

 magnet of an iron or steel diaphragm secured to a resonant 

 case " is declared to be liell's. Edison is awarded priority 

 in the case of a spring carrying one electrode and pressing 

 it against the other electrode and diaphragm. While upon 

 this subject, we may refer to Professor Silvanus P. Thomp- 

 son's recent researches into the earlier works of Philip 

 Reis, recently published in the form of a biography. Prof. 

 Thompson shows that Reis is the original mventor of the 

 speaking telephone, that he intended it to tpeak, and that 

 it did speak more or less perfectly. — Engiuecrimj. 



